1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a clothes dryer.
2. Background
A clothes dryer is an apparatus that supplies dry air into a drum in which clothes are placed in order to dry the clothes. The clothes dryer may be classified as an exhaust type clothes dryer that exhausts air discharged from a drum out of the clothes dryer or a circulation type clothes dryer that circulates air discharged from a drum and resupplies the circulated air into the drum.
In the circulation type clothes dryer, a filter cartridge is provided in a circulation channel in order to prevent foreign matter, such as lint or dust, floating in the air discharged from the drum from being introduced into the drum again. The filter cartridge is configured so as to be separable from the clothes dryer such that a user separates the filter cartridge from the clothes dryer and removes foreign matter from the filter cartridge.
The filter cartridge may be configured to have a dual filter structure in which an inside filter cartridge is received in an outside filter cartridge such that air passes through the inside filter cartridge, by which the air is primarily filtered, and then the air passes through the outside filter cartridge, by which the air is secondarily filtered. Conventionally, the inside filter cartridge and the outside filter cartridge are mounted in the clothes dryer in the state in which the inside filter cartridge and the outside filter cartridge are not coupled or connected to each other such that the inside filter cartridge can be easily inserted into and separated from the outside filter cartridge. That is, the conventional filter cartridge is generally configured to have a structure in which the outside filter cartridge is separably mounted on a location part formed in the clothes dryer in the state in which the inside filter cartridge is received in the outside filter cartridge such that the inside filter cartridge can be freely withdrawn from the outside filter cartridge. In this structure, however, most of the filter cartridge is disposed in the circulation channel and only a portion of the filter cartridge is exposed such that a user may hold the filter cartridge. For this reason, it is not easy for the user to intuitively recognize the fact that the filter cartridge is configured to have a dual filter structure when the filter cartridge is separated from the clothes dryer. Furthermore, the inside filter cartridge is freely separable from the outside filter cartridge. When the inside filter cartridge is pulled in order to remove foreign matter from the filter cartridge, therefore, the outside filter cartridge may remain in the clothes dryer. If the user does not have intimate knowledge of the structure of the clothes dryer in advance, however, it is not easy for the user to recognize that the outside filter cartridge is still mounted in the clothes dryer. As a result, only the inside filter cartridge is separated and cleaned, and foreign matter continues to accumulate in the outside filter cartridge, whereby the overall capacity of the filter cartridge is lowered. In addition, a stream of air does not smoothly flow, whereby clothes may be excessively dried, or the clothes dryer may frequently malfunction due to overheating.
Furthermore, in the conventional filter cartridge, the inside filter cartridge and the outside filter cartridge are easily separated from each other in the state in which the filter cartridge is separated from the clothes dryer. As a result, it is troublesome to handle the two separated members. In particular, the inside filter cartridge and the outside filter cartridge may be lost.